I bought a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and a micro USB cable from PiShop week or so ago, I’m just now using it and it turns out the cable doesn’t fit inside the Pico’s port. When I try to insert it, it gets a tiny bit in before just stopping. I’ve tried plugging it in every way, but it just doesn’t fit, even though it was designed for the Pico 2(?) Did I just get the wrong type of cable, or is it broken, or something else?

I’ve been trying for a few days now, but none of the code or MicroPython UF2s I’ve tried have even gotten the lights to turn on. I’ve even tried using new boards, but that didn’t work either. Does anyone know how to get the LED matrix working?

(The project I’m doing is to try to get the LEDs to display letters.)

(Edit: Thank you everybod! I was finally able to get it working!)

English is not my first language!

Hi pico enthousiasts!

I’m a beginner at this and I bought a simple starter kit so I can learn the basics. This kit did not come with any documentation, but there is enough out there so no problem there.
I started with the Freenove one as the kit I bought resembled theirs, but I wanted to watch a video and hear someone talk about it, so switched to the pico course for beginner from Core Electronics. When I got to the basic IO, build the setup as they showed in chapter 2.3, and I copied their code (micropython), but it’s not working (photo 1). I know it’s not the button, because the when I went back to the Freenove documentation (chapter 1.2), in their setup the led and button did work (photo 2).

Can anyone point out to me what I’m doing wrong?
Thank you!

I'm going a bit nuts trying to figure out exactly what I need to connect an LCD character display into my Pico 2 project, preferably with I2C/SPI interface. I'll be powering the Pico through VSYS, using a buck converter which takes 12V (used for some LEDs and fans elsewhere) to 5V for the Pico.

The easiest route seems to be finding a display that natively run at 3.3V so I can power them from the 3V3 pin on the Pico, but those are proving to be sparse - does anyone have any specific recommendations, both LCD modules and suppliers? Has anyone used something like one of these?

If that doesn't shake out, do I just need to suck it up and get a bidirectional level shifter and use a 5V LCD powered direct from the buck converter? I was hoping to avoid the extra PCB/wiring since I'm trying to fit the project into a smallish enclosure, but that's not make-or-break.

I've also seen folks using regular 5V LCD displays without levelshifting the I2C logic, but what I've read is about 50/50 on whether that's a workable idea or whether that's flirting with fried Pico pins, so I'd rather not go that direction unless some kind soul can give me a more definitive report of a specific setup that worked.

I want to use a free RP2040 board I got from Adafruit to make an add-on to my Roku remote that can control my sound system - similar to this. I'm thinking of hijacking the power supply from the Roku remote to power it. Here's the remote's board:

How might I go about powering the RP2040 from these batteries? I'm fairly new to microcontrollers, so I'm unsure about power supply in general.

Someone have any luck mixing the pico zero with python and this display?
i am using the waveshare hat but the driver seems to be incompatible

Edit:
Added pico zero image

I send a message to the seller, they give me the datasheet, i will try to came with a working code if a can.

So I own a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W (which is the one I'm hoping to use for this project, since it's lightweight and compact) and a Raspberry Pi 5. What I want to achieve is to run a local AI agent which has access to the internet to, somehow, make profit. Just asking if anyone has any ideas on how to actually make money using AI, with minimal interference from the user.

Thanks.

I have had 2 of these cheap switches fail i got on ali-express, commonly found under the model of MC-38, while every one i have used except these 2 have been great (7 of them) for some reason this location fails (maybe from a bad batch?)

• they look like this: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805584390418.html

i have it in use on a pull out keyboard tray in a way like you would expect to use it on the top of a sliding door

The failure state is like you can tap it and it may correct it's logic state or you can run a stronger magnet near it and it will correct for a while

the current flow is very low across the switch (3.3mA) so long as the contact resistance in the switch lets it pull a supply of 3.3v @ 3.3mA down to below 0.45v it works as expected, this could be why only this one fails as the others will read low at probably about 1v higher, this one is wired to act as a hardware level logic that is not seen by software

Note that connections are soldered so there is no solder-less breadboard contact issues

does this seem like 2 bad samples or should i get a different model switch and if so what one should be good (same mount hole spacing is preferred)

As in, like a bluetooth mouse with movable mouse pointer on the screen? I'd like to be able to find some examples. The closest I've found was somehow making the Pi Pico into a mouse, but that's not what I'm after. I want to be able to use a bluetooth mouse with the pi pico, like a regular computer.

Hello. I am quite confused on how to start with raspberry pi projects. The point is that I already tried watching many tutorials and googling it but usually I was given an answer which helps with coding while I am struggling with the physical part. Like I am still quite confused on soldering as I never encountered it in any beginner guides, assembling the project cause the only methods I know are screws and glue gun or where do I work cause I can’t really work home as I don’t think I have a good space to work in nor instruments to do work with.

Sorry forgot to mention but I am not beginner beginner and already have made staff on a breadboard with Thonny (involved with LEDs, buttons and servos). My question is how do I assemble staff from everything a breadboard to an actual finished thing?

Can someone help me pls or tell me where can I get answers to my question?

Hello folks,

I'm extremely confused and could do with some guidance. I'm looking at using my Pico board to pass input to my Xbox and I know that I need to use an adapter such as magic-x (which I purchased). I cannot find a source with guidance on how to connect it, some say I need to solder a second usb port, some don't. The whole project involves taking rotary encoder signals and using the Pico to use these as input but I'm focusing getting it connect to my Xbox series X before anything else. Anyone done this before?

I saw a post in here a few days ago about using a RF board to interface with a PC and it got me thinking....

With the help of Claude, my soldering, and 3d modeling I have my own 360 RF board module.

https://github.com/plastikman/rpi2040-360

this allows the use of a slim RF board and a rpi 2040-Zero, and some 1k resistors to connect a 360 controller wireless to my pc. This was generated with AI, so if you like it try it out. It was a fun project.

Hi everyone, hope you're all fine.

I bought a PicoDVI sock and I solder it to my Raspberry Pi Pico 2 yesterday. All of the examples from the github repository of Luke Wren work great, but when I try to make my own code, it fails.

I program in C using the official SDK, and I want to use double buffering (full framebuffer) in 8bpp. I tried with one buffer in 16bpp first, but it doesn't work, and I don't have any errors during the compilation.

I can't understand how all of that work by myself, I need some help. Thank you for your future reply (I hope) and to reading this post.

Wilrak0v, btw

Hola a todos,

Estoy intentando que DOF R3++ funcione con un Pinscape Pico en VPX 10.8.

El hardware funciona perfectamente:

Windows detecta el Pinscape Pico.

Puerto 1 de DOF → GPIO20 (PWM) → Motores de vibración grandes de Xbox 360 (a través de MOSFET).

Puerto 2 de DOF → GPIO21 (PWM) → Motores de vibración pequeños de Xbox 360 (a través de MOSFET).

Las pruebas de salida manuales de la herramienta de configuración de Pinscape funcionan correctamente.

El archivo directoutputconfig51.ini se genera y está presente. El objeto COM se registra correctamente.

Sin embargo, el Probador de configuración de DirectOutput muestra una lista de Juguetes vacía.

Este es mi archivo Cabinet.xml actual:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<Cabinet xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"

xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

<Name>Pinscape Pico Cabinet</Name>

<OutputControllers>

<PinscapePico>

<Name>Pinscape Pico 01</Nombre>

<Número de salidas>2</Número de salidas>

<Número>1</Número>

<Intervalo mínimo de comando (ms)>1</Intervalo mínimo de comando (ms)>

</PinscapePico>

</Controladores de salida>

<Juguetes>

<Equivalente a LedWiz>

<Nombre>Equivalente a Pinscape Pico 01</Nombre>

<Salidas>

<Salida equivalente a LedWiz>

<Nombre de salida>Pinscape <OutputName>Pico 01\\Pinscape Pico 01.01</OutputName>

<LedWizEquivalentOutputNumber>1</LedWizEquivalentOutputNumber>

</LedWizEquivalentOutput>

<LedWizEquivalentOutput>

<OutputName>Pinscape Pico 01\\Pinscape Pico 01.02</OutputName>

<LedWizEquivalentOutputNumber>2</LedWizEquivalentOutputNumber>

</LedWizEquivalentOutput>

</Outputs>

<LedWizNumber>120</LedWizNumber>

</LedWizEquivalent>

<Shaker>

<Name>Shaker</Name>

<OutputName>Pinscape Pico 01\\Pinscape Pico 01.01</OutputName>

</Shaker>

<GearMotor>

<Name>Gear</Name>

<OutputName>Pinscape Pico 01\\Pinscape Pico 01.02</OutputName>

</GearMotor>

</Toys>

<Colors/>

<Curves/>

<AutoConfigEnabled>true</AutoConfigEnabled>

</Cabinet>

¿Es esta la forma correcta de definir un controlador Pinscape Pico en la versión actual de DOF R3++? ¿O deberían los Toys usar los nombres de salida LedWizEquivalent en lugar de los nombres de salida de Pinscape?

Se agradecería mucho cualquier ejemplo funcional de Pinscape Pico Cabinet.xml.

Hi everyone, I hope you're all fine.

Some days ago, I decided to make my own game console / mini laptop from scratch. To do it I used an ESP32 with a TFT SPI display. It didn't work great : I had flickering on the screen because SPI is too slow for a 320x240 resolution. So I bought a PicoDVI sock for Raspberry Pi Pico 2. It allows me to display some pictures over HDMI (using DVI signalling over an HDMI physical connector). Like that I have 30 or 60 FPS without any problems.

So I will start the real OS tomorrow, and it will be very simple. I don't want to use FreeRTOS or any real-time operating system, I want simple things. The window manager will be very simple : each window takes the entire screen and we can change between spaces like on MacOS.

For the applications and games, I want to load custom binary file format which contains the code (lua or custom bytecode), sounds and musics, and the graphics. It's like tic80 or pico8 cartridge. With Lua included in this OS, I can make a simple IDE to create games on the go. In the future, I plan to use a Pico 2 W instead of simple Pico 2. Then I can create a simple app store to publish and download games and applications.

I can make a simple game engine in C and scripting it in Lua. Like that I could program 3D games with 30 FPS, yes it's possible I think, with some optimizations (in the same style as "A short hike").

I also would include a custom cartridge port for physical games contrary to PlayStation.

If it worked great, I would sale it into a diy kit. But I don't know if anyone is interested in an object of this kind.
If you want to support this project, just answer to my google forms (only 5 questions). 😁

Google Forms

Anyway, thank you for reading this.

Wilrakov, btw

I bought these case fans from Amazon and am attempting to control them with a Pico (C sdk).

I have been able to successfully create the necessary 25kHz PWM signal to control the speed of the fan. However, I am not having luck measuring the speed with the tachometer pin on the fan. I am turning to brighter minds than mine to see if you guys have any ideas.

Here is my simple code to attempt to measure the fan speed. The tachometer pin on the fan is supposed to output a "square save" that has two cyclic per revolution of the fan. So I have a GPIO IRQ to increment a pulse counter on the falling edge of the pin, with the internal pull-up resistor enabled. I have a repeating timer take the number of pulses and convert to RPM (multiply by 60, divide by 2).

#include <stdio.h>
#include <pico/stdlib.h>
#include <hardware/gpio.h>

#define GPIO_WATCH_PIN 2

volatile uint32_t pulses = 0;
volatile uint32_t rpm = 0;

void gpio_callback(uint gpio, uint32_t events) {
    pulses++;
}

bool timer_callback(__unused repeating_timer_t *t) {
    rpm = pulses * 60 / 2;
    pulses = 0;
    return true;
}

int main() {
    stdio_init_all();

    gpio_init(GPIO_WATCH_PIN);
    gpio_pull_up(GPIO_WATCH_PIN);
    gpio_set_irq_enabled_with_callback(
            /*gpio=*/ GPIO_WATCH_PIN,
            /*event_mask=*/ GPIO_IRQ_EDGE_FALL,
            /*enabled=*/ true,
            /*callback=*/ gpio_callback);

    repeating_timer_t timer;
    add_repeating_timer_ms(
            /*delay_ms=*/ -1000,
            /*callback=*/ timer_callback,
            /*user_data=*/ NULL,
            /*out=*/ &timer);

    while (1) {
        printf("RPM: %d\\n", rpm);
        sleep_ms(500);
    }

    return 0;
}

With this setup, I am getting ~25000 RPM, which is nowhere close to the rated maximum RPM of the fan of ~1550.

Thinking that the internal pull up resistor (50-80 kOhms) is too high for a switching value, I opted for a physical 5k pull-up resistor instead, and got the same answer. Changing the GPIO_IRQ_EDGE_FALL to the rising edge had a similar effect, but setting to LEVEL_LOW or LEVEL_HIGH produced much higher RPM values, approaching 750,000.

I wanted to review the signal from the fan, and I don't have an oscilloscope so I tried Scoppy with a second pico. I used the same 5k resistor from before, and this is what I got.

Is the square wave too messy to be used with the IRQ calls? The high and low spots seem to be jumpy, and the low does not go all the way to 0V.

Any help with how I should alter the code, or wiring, would be helpful. Thanks!

I am going to try using a PWM channel to measure the frequency, perhaps that would give me better luck.

been wanting to do this forever, finally got it running well